Homo comoedia

What must existence be like in order for it to be a joke?

Start over.

What would the world be like without humor?

Late night comedy all day long?   

How about this: what must the world be like in order for humor to exist?

Are you asking me? Bec-

No, let me guess, and you tell me at the end if I'm correct.

Let's think this through. In order for a joke to exist, there must exist multiple levels of reality in addition to the the levels that must already exist in order for human beings to exist. In other words, we're talking about levels within levels, or rather, multiple levels on the human level.

It seems that even the most basic joke -- the fart joke, let us say -- must require at least two levels that exist in tension until the "punchline" occurs with the breaking of wind. 

Two primordial ancestors -- let us call them Mutt and Jute -- are sitting by the fire. Here is some of their conversation, unedited for obscurity:

Jute. — Are you jeff?

Mutt. — Somehards.

Jute. — But you are not jeffmute? 

Mutt. — Noho. Only an utterer.

Jute. — Whoa? Whoat is the mutter with you?

Mutt. — I became a stun a stummer.

Jute. — What a hauhauhauhaudibble thing, to be cause! How, Mutt?

Mutt. — Aput the buttle, surd.

Jute. — Whose poddle? Wherein?

Mutt. — The Inns of Dungtarf where Used awe to be he.

Jute. — You that side your voise are almost inedible to me. Become a bitskin more wiseable, as if I were you....

Mutt. — Ore you astoneaged, jute you?

Jute. — Oye am thonthorstrok, thing mud.

I don't get it.

No worries. Campbell & Robinson have translated it:

--Are you deaf? Deaf-mute? What is the matter with you anyhow?

--Not deaf, but I have suffered some damage from a bottle in a local tavern -- or rather, from a battle at Clontarf.

--Horrible! But come on! Wise onto yourself! Wake up!

--Are you astonished, you stone-aged Jute, you?

--I am thunderstruck; I am Thor's thunderstroke...

Congratulations. You lost the last reader.  

Granted, I picked a poor example, or rather, far too rich, for Joyce's 500 page joke operates operates on so many levels that no one has ever fully gotten it. It has countless self-referential jokes, with many a smile to nondum if you are abcedminded to the grand funferall in this meanderthalltale! It's just that 

The movibles are scrawling in motions, marching, all of them ago, in pitpat and zingzang, for every busy eerie whig's a bit of a torytale to tell.

Whatever. It's not too late to start over. 

Laugher results from the collapse of tension between levels.

Good. How about some examples, and not from Joyce?

Alright then, Wodehouse:

It was one of those still evenings you get in the summer, when you can hear a snail clear its throat a mile away.

He was staring incredulously, like one bitten by a rabbit.

He crouched in the wardrobe like a weevil nestling in a biscuit.

Old Mr. Saxby looked like something stationed in a cornfield to discourage crows.

He gave me a long, reproachful look, similar in its essentials to that which a black beetle gives a cook when the latter is sprinkling insect powder on it.

He heaved himself up in slow motion like a courtly hippopotamus rising from its bed of reeds on a riverbank.

He, too, seemed disinclined for chit-chat. We stood for some moments like a couple of Trappist monks who have run into each other by chance at the dog races.

His face darkened. He looked like a halibut that's taken offense at a rude remark from another halibut.

Like the head of a great fish, lying on carpet and staring up at me in a rather austere sort of way, as if it wanted an explanation and apology.

Hungry is not the word. I felt like a homeless tapeworm.

He vanished like an eel into mud.

Uncle Tom always looked like a pterodactyl with a secret sorrow. 

His IQ was somewhat lower than that of a backward clam -- a clam, let us say, which had been dropped on its head when a baby.

George stammered. He produced a sort of sizzling sound like a cockroach calling its young.

I haven't felt so relieved since the afternoon in West Africa when a rhinoceros, charging at me flashing eyes, suddenly sprained an ankle and had to call the whole thing off.

"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha," he replied, with scarcely veiled derision.

I have a memory like a steel trap, but it doesn't always work as it should.

One prefers, of course, in all occasions to be above reproach, but, failing that, the next best thing is unquestionably to have got rid of the body.

Don't worry, I'm not going to spoil the mood with explanations of why these are funny, only to say that each of them benefits from the juxtaposition of sober and silly, serious and absurd, high and low. 

Back to what the universe must be like in order for humor to exist. I suspect humor is much like music, in that it is universally present in every culture known to man except for the progressive left, where it is both impossible and impermissible. This latter is equally important, for it is more proof that the left is so unfunny it's funny.

In the past we've discussed the importance of music, in that perhaps we love it because it reveals something essential about the structure of reality. Supposing humor as such also reveals something fundamentally true of existence, what might that be?

What must existence be like in order for it to be a joke?

Start over.